


Before midnight

by GingerAndHyde



Category: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Gabriel is a mess, I'm Sorry, M/M, he was in LOVE, henry’s dead, time for Utterson to uttersob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22626832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerAndHyde/pseuds/GingerAndHyde
Summary: The police were to arrive at midnight. This gave Gabriel Utterson only half an hour alone with the body.
Relationships: Edward Hyde/Gabriel John Utterson, Henry Jekyll/Gabriel John Utterson
Comments: 21
Kudos: 79





	Before midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously not part of my alt-ending ficverse, but I wanted to do a one shot so whatcha gonna do?
> 
> I wrote this way too late at night, so it’s really short and probably trash. 
> 
> I think I’m addicted to angst, y’all.

The police were coming at midnight. It had all been prearranged with the servants; they were to send out one of their number to report the death as soon as the clocks chimed.

This gave Gabriel Utterson only half an hour alone with the body.

He had finished reading the documents at approximately 10:30. After absorbing the shock the best he could, he had taken a hansom to the house of the dead man. 

He was careful to remain silent. But there was nothing to hide, was there? After all, he was only shaking due to the bitterly cold early-March air. The streaks down his face were merely the byproduct of eyes that watered in the ferocious wind. His face was stony and unreadable. 

Hopefully.

He climbed out of the hansom and opened the strong, beautifully carved wooden door of the house in question without knocking. It was unlocked, as he had asked it to be. The servants in the front hall were silent and skittish, casting nervous glances in his direction as he briskly walked past them. He met with the butler at the side door, as planned. The two men passed silently out of the house, through the courtyard, and up the worn path to the separate building across the withered, barren garden. The butler unlocked the door with the smallest nod and the pair stepped into the dissecting theater. Starlight filtered through the glass cupola above, casting eerie shadows about the packing crates and equipment strewn everywhere. 

“I would like to go up alone,” whispered the lawyer, his voice shaking slightly. 

“Of course.”

Utterson ascended the stairs to the cabinet slowly. His knees felt weak and shaky, his heart was pounding out of his chest... 

He approached the empty space where there used to be a door.

The cabinet was exactly as they’d left it. Exactly. A kettle on the table by the fireplace, which now held only dim, graying embers, barely clinging to life. A candle burnt down to a stump, sputtering as the flame began to fade. One unshuttered window, casting a narrow sliver of moonlight across the room. A little clock on the mantelpiece. A mess of papers strewn across the floor. Shards of broken glass from a viciously shattered mirror. 

A small, broken body in the center of the room.

Utterson approached it slower still, glass crunching beneath his feet. The little face was turned towards the ceiling, as though the dead man was staring, transfixed, at a light above...or was calling out desperately for salvation as he fell.

A shattered glass vial, still smelling of bitter almonds, dug its splinters into the pale, stiff hand. 

Messy red hair fell around the body’s head, splayed out almost artfully, drawing the impossibly pale face into even sharper contrast. The mouth was open slightly as though gasping for breath, pointed teeth shining white in the moonlight. The face was so small. Horrible and delicate. 

It was the eyes that bothered Utterson the most. Grey and unblinking, the wide, dead eyes glistened in the light of the sputtering candle, sparkling with a false life. They were so familiar. If Gabriel Utterson has looked into them once, he had looked into them a thousand times. Just seeing then now, shining dully out of the body’s face, grounded him to the fact that everything in the document was real. They were the one part of the corpse that looked like Henry. 

This  _ was  _ Henry. And he was gone.

Gabriel choked back a sob, sinking to his knees beside the body. He knew he shouldn’t touch it. Tampering with evidence, and all that. But it wasn’t like it mattered. It was a suicide, plain and simple, and any investigator with eyes would be able to see that. The cyanide that reeked from the open mouth and the shards of glass from the deadly vial still embedded in the corpse’s hand were testimony to that.

Gabriel took the little body in his arms. 

It was so light. Fragile. Horrible and delicate.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” Gabriel whispered, eyes prickling with tears. How long had it been since he cried? Too long. He had held in the tears after Hastie died. Held them in at the funeral. Held them in for every terrible night between then and now, not allowing a single drop to escape his eyes and splash onto his pillow. Held them in when everything was broken. He couldn’t fight it anymore.

“Why did you do this to yourself?”, he asked, pleading softly. “You tore yourself apart...and I never noticed. Oh, God, why didn’t I  _ notice_?” He shook with unsteady breaths, holding the cold, dead thing tighter. 

“You could have told me! You could have told me that you couldn’t hide it away anymore!...You were never alone. I hid things, too. You have no idea. I push things back until it hurts...It hurts so much. It tears you up inside, doesn’t it?”

The corpse was cold to touch. Horrible and delicate.

“And you feel like you can’t hide it anymore. You feel like you can’t stay quiet any longer. I  understand. But you destroyed yourself- you broke yourself in two, and you hurt others along the way...You didn’t have to! You never had to do this, you never had to change, you could have told me! I would have  _ stayed!_”

He was quiet for a moment. 

“I would have stayed...because I understand. Because I feel like I’m being crushed, too. Because I hide so much. If you only told me...maybe I could’ve told you, too...”

A tear fell onto the awful little face. Horrible and delicate. Those grey eyes- Henry’s eyes- seemed to stare up at Gabriel in the candlelight. Henry’s eyes.  _ How had he never noticed that Hyde had Henry’s eyes? _

He bent over the little body, bowing his head over its own. No cold waves of revulsion swept over him now. 

“Henry...Maybe I could’ve told you- maybe I could’ve told you I loved you.”

The little clock on the mantel chimedtwelve times. Each strike  _ hurt._

The candle sputtered out.


End file.
